Dear all,

This brings up discussions on social cocooning....what follows is an excerpt
out of one of my project documentations ....it draws from works of *Mark
Weiser *in specific his essay on calm technology -

"It seems contradictory to say, in the face of frequent complaints about
information overload, that more information could be encalming. It seems
almost nonsensical to say that the way to become attuned to more information
is to attend to it less. It is these apparently bizarre features that may
account for why so few designs properly take into account center and
periphery to achieve an increased sense of locatedness. But such designs are
crucial. Once we are located in a world, the door is opened to social
interactions among shared things in that world. As we learn to design calm
technology, we will enrich not only our space of artifacts, but also our
opportunities for being with other people." **

this lead me to observe the current i-pod like scenario and comment -
"It has been observed that all individuals have a certain personal space
which reduces as one grows older, this leads to social cocooning where human
to human interaction is reduced. such phenomenon are mostly caused by
personalization and customization of our living spaces and the artifacts
they contain, at all levels.
Thus it should be considered that introducing children to personal gadgets
from a very young age might reduce their space on the onset itself and due
to the funnel effect lead to even smaller personal spaces as they grow up. "

My work often culminates into media installations which aim at creating
collaborative interfaces.....and the success is gauged by the number of
people (strangers) it end up befriending.

this also connects thoughts about Alvin tofflers essays on
Industrialization and how the concept of "mass production" came by
......and makes one reflect that in this "hyper connected" digital
age.....De-massification of the masses has been taken to new levels by the
"customization" culture.

following are a couple of related excerpts from my final design project
where-in I attempted a futurist outlook after wide reading and research
specific to the Indian context-

"Death of consumer -As technology permeates and we learn to assimilate
and KNOW more about our surroundings and the artifacts they contain we will
no longer remain simple consumers consuming mass-produced
items without asking much. Instead we graduate to being prosumers (producer
consumers)
capable of carrying out certain customization ( production) tasks at our
homes. This customizing
prosumer would endorse the Self- Help wave about to hit us ."


"Social cocooning -
 As we develop and urbanize ....with all products and services being 'Custom
fit' and with a 'just for you' tag our need for differentiation (from
others) only grows stronger. This need with age creates a shell around a
being which in turn makes him/her inept of reaching out and interacting with
other fellow beings ........this is a fast surfacing observation in the west
and may hold a lesson for us to prepare systems and services in such a way
that INTERACTION
(not between man and machine ....but man and man ) is always a prime
feature."


I would be graduating this year and realize already that I have much to
learn ......(very reason I enlisted in this list)......kindly pardon and
correct any naive assumptions / mistakes in the above......



Greets and Regards
Himanshu Khatri
Interaction Designer - NID




On 8/7/07, Daniel Huppatz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Listees
> In response to Victor's question (I read the digest version, usually a few
> days later!), I've just finished a class where a student did a
> presentation on the I-Pod & I tried to push him to consider how it is used
> and what it means in contemporary society (read the Walkman essay, Digital
> Watch as Tribal Bracelet essay). He didn't do a great job but some
> interesting discussion arose about the advertisements he showed us - the
> gap between the image of the product and its actual use - one in
> particular showed people dancing together with their I-Pods on. I pointed
> out the irony of them dancing "together" while listening to their own
> personal music (expressing their individuality - is that what the "I" is
> for?). I see many people on the subway everyday using these products & it
> does strike me as rather sad to experience on a mass scale, the devices
> seem to function as a personal cocoon to protect people from the outside
> world ("I" is for insular? or insulator?). This is perhaps the New York
> perspective (it's a paranoid culture) but they seem to be predicated on a
> particular idea about the individual (design for the I generation?) that
> is specifically not predicated on any concept of community (except
> community of I-Pod listeners expressing their individuality, all together
> alone). A further perspective on the protection device theme is that a
> couple of years ago, the distinctive white headphone design was symbolic
> of an expensive item - if I'm a thief, I don't know what's in your
> pockets, but I know your I-Pod is worth four hundred bucks (maybe two on
> the black market) - for a while on the NY subway, the distinctive design
> functioned as a kind of target. Reality in the form of a knife blade or
> .45 short circuits the insulator...
>
> Bedtime...
> Best
> Daniel Huppatz
> Pratt Institute
>